Читать книгу G Suite For Dummies - Paul McFedries, Paul McFedries - Страница 12

In the world of business jargon, a silo is a person or department that can't or won't share information with other people or departments in the company. Not all that long ago, all employees were silos in a way. Why? Because they beavered away at their computers using installed software such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, with all of their documents stored safely on their hard drives. Sure, every now and then they shared a document on the network or via email, but for the most part they worked in not-so-splendid isolation from their peers.

But as management gurus and overpaid consultants have been telling anyone who'll listen for at least a couple of decades now, silos are bad. On an individual level, silos make everyone less efficient and less productive; on a departmental level, silos create duplication of effort and endless turf wars; on a company level, silos inhibit growth and innovation.

Yes, silos are nasty things, but how do you get rid of them? An alarmingly large number of management reports and business books have been written to answer that question. It's a complex and difficult topic, but here are three solutions that are almost certainly common to all those reports and books:

 Make it easy for individuals to access their software and documents no matter where they are or what type of device they're using.

 Make it easy for people on the same team or in the same department to collaborate with each other.

 Make it easy for people on different teams or in different departments to share information with each other.

And that, at long last, is where G Suite comes in. Google's G Suite is a set of applications that's designed to tear down silos. How? By implementing the preceding list of solutions in the following ways:

 G Suite apps aren't installed on your computer. Instead, they live online (in the cloud, to use the vernacular), so you can access them from any location that has Internet access, using any type of device — desktop PC, laptop, Touch PC, tablet, smartphone, you name it — that you have handy.

 G Suite apps are built with collaboration in mind. For example, two or more people can work on the same document at the same time. No, I'm not just making that up — it's a real feature. G Suite also enables you to easily email, meet, and chat with members of your team or department, so everyone stays in the loop.

 G Suite documents aren't stored on your computer. Instead, all G Suite data and documents reside in the cloud, so it's a snap to share them with anyone in your company.

Silos, schmi-los!